Finalists Announced for Nielsen’s Automotive Green Marketer of the Year

Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota are the finalists for the first ever Automotive Green Marketer of the Year, which will be presented at the Los Angeles International Auto Show on November 18, 2010. The award recognizes the brand that made the greatest strides in gaining consumer awareness and positively shifting consumer perceptions for the automotive industry’s environmentally friendly initiatives. Auto manufacturers that ran any national TV ads with “green” themes between October 2009 and September 2010 were eligible for consideration.

To determine the finalists and winner, Nielsen leveraged three research studies to incorporate awareness levels and perceptions across media types. The studies included:

• A custom survey of nearly 7,000 consumers’ cross-media awareness and perceptions of environmental messages by automotive brand
• Response data from 2.5 million viewers of national television advertising collected by Nielsen’s ad effectiveness measurements service, focusing on green automotive ads
• Measuring social media “buzz” sentiment within green-related discussion threads

The results showed that consumers have definite high awareness of environmentally friendly ad campaigns, with eight in 10 consumers in the cross-media awareness survey reporting seeing “green” auto ads recently. Also notable is the generally positive nature of discussion surrounding green topics for auto brands in consumer-generated media (CGM). Less than 1 percent of discussion was negative on average. This is also reflected in the number of consumers who said green ads shift their opinion of the brand, with two-thirds saying their opinion was more positive after seeing these ads.

“We have seen a heightened awareness among consumers for environmental initiatives in the auto sector,” said Lois Miller, President of Nielsen Automotive. “The key benefit is that with this awareness is also a more positive view of the brand and ultimately, this can help auto manufacturers reach consumers that may not have considered their brand before.”